Earth’s Temperature is Rising: How We Know

We hear a lot about global warming, but what does it mean exactly? How do we know our planet is getting warmer? One way we know, is because we’ve been keeping track of the Earth’s temperature for more than a century. And, according to Climate Central, “Human activities have already warmed the planet about 1°C (1.8°F) since the pre-industrial era, defined by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) as the latter half of the 19th century.”

There are six different scientific organizations in the world that track temperatures. They are: NOAA, NASA, Berkeley Earth, the United Kingdom's Hadley Centre, the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and the Japan Meteorological Agency.

NOAA or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is an American scientific agency within the United States Department of Commerce with a mission “to understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans and coasts; to share that knowledge and information with others; and to conserve and manage coastal and marine ecosystems and resources.”

If one is interested in a monthly Global Climate Report, check out NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. This is one site to confirm that our planet is warming. For example, eight of the ten planet’s hottest years ever recorded occurred in the ten years from 2009 to 2018, a clear sign of global warming. And six of the hottest years ever recorded happened in the six years from 2014 to 2019.

Ten Warmest Years (1880–2018)
The following table lists the global combined land and ocean annually-averaged temperature rank and anomaly for each of the 10 warmest years on record.

A complete record of global temperatures since 1880 from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) is available, clearly showing steadily rising temperatures, especially in recent decades.

The Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Change is one of the United Kingdom's leading centers for the study of scientific issues associated with climate change. Their data sets go back nearly 170 years and show a pronounced warming over that period of time.

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST), now known simply as Berkeley Earth, is a California-based non-profit research organization that has been preparing independent analyses of global mean temperature changes since 2013. What follows is from their Global Temperature Report for 2018.

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST), now known simply as Berkeley Earth, is a California-based non-profit research organization that has been preparing independent analyses of global mean temperature changes since 2013. What follows is from their Global Temperature Report for 2018.

The Climatic Research Unit was founded in 1971 in Norwich, England as part of the University of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences and is widely recognized as one of the leading institutions concerned with the study of natural and human-caused climate change. “The aim of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) is to improve scientific understanding of the climate system and its interactions with society.” This is their graph showing rising temperatures from 1860 to 2018 with a dramatic warming trend beginning in the late 1980s.